


Five Ways Tao of Rodney Could Have Ended

by ras_elased



Category: SGA - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-17
Updated: 2006-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-11 13:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ras_elased/pseuds/ras_elased





	Five Ways Tao of Rodney Could Have Ended

  
  
  
  
  


**Entry tags:**

| 

  
[fic: 5 ways tao of rodney could have end](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/fic%3A%205%20ways%20tao%20of%20rodney%20could%20have%20end), [genre: 5 things](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%205%20things), [genre: angst](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20angst), [genre: au](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20au), [genre: drama](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20drama), [genre: fluff](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20fluff), [genre: friendship](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20friendship), [genre: humor](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20humor), [genre: post-ep](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20post-ep), [genre: romance](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20romance), [pairing: mcshep](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/pairing%3A%20mcshep), [rating: pg-13](http://ras-fic.livejournal.com/tag/rating%3A%20pg-13)  
  
  
---|---  
  
_   
**Five Ways Tao of Rodney Could Have Ended**   
_

  
**Title**: Five Ways Tao of Rodney Could Have Ended

  
**Author**: Ras Elased

  
**Spoilers**: Uh…duh.

  
**Rating**: PG-13, tops  
**Warning**: Character death

  
**Author's** **notes**: So I watched ToR (finally!) yesterday morning, and I had so many fic bunnies spring up that I couldn't possibly get them all done. This was an attempt to exorcise them so I could get some real work done. Unbeta'd, so please point out any mistakes in the comments and I'll fix them.

1.

 

Sometimes John swears he can feel him. A gust of wind a little too cool for a hot summer day, a warm ray of sunlight just a little too bright through his favorite stained glass window. He imagines – or tries not to, really – the havoc Rodney is creating. He pictures Rodney's roiling temper and flair for the dramatic released into the tranquil nothingness of ascension, and he feels a pang of sympathy for everyone on that plane. But it still makes him smile.

 

He begins sitting in on Teyla and Ronon's meditation lessons, not really knowing why at first. He tells himself it's some morbid form of team bonding, all of them missing Rodney and feeling like the sessions make him seem a little less out of reach, but deep down John's afraid of what his real motivations might be. So the first time he finds himself alone in his quarters, focusing on his breathing instead of Tolstoy, his subsequent freak out is completely understandable.

 

It's about a month later that Teyla begins to watch him more closely, and Elizabeth makes a veiled comment about how lately he seems even more laid back than usual. John just smiles and doubles his daily meditation time.

 

When John narrowly avoids a rather well-planned ambush, he is able to pass it off as military intuition, heightened by life in the Pegasus Galaxy. He doesn't tell anyone he saw it coming in his head.

 

The first time John inadvertently heals Ronon's gunshot wound, he nearly has a heart attack. Carson nearly has an aneurysm. Nobody will believe him when he says it was an accident. He eventually learns to ignore the stares.

 

After that, John sees no reason to keep quiet. Elizabeth denies his requests to use the Ascension machine, and then his requests to go back to the planet with the time dilation field. Carson starts taking readings during his meditation sessions. He has apoplectic fits of worry every time John's numbers drop, but the first time John comes back to himself to find Carson staring at him, still and pale and sad, John puts a stop to the readings.

 

He suspects that Carson's talked to Elizabeth when she arrives at the door to his quarters, wringing her hands as if about to deliver bad news. Instead, she tells him she's approved his request to use the device. John wants to go right now. She gives him a week. John pretends not to hear the hurt in her voice, and she pretends it's not too much to ask.

 

All told, it is less than four months before John steps up to the machine. John likes to think he holds the record for fastest time from zero to ascension, but every time he so much as thinks it he can hear Rodney's answering snort in his head. Teyla is happy, if resigned. Ronon hasn't spoken to him in a week, and is off hunting on the mainland that day. Everyone else is there, just like they're by his bedside a few days later. John takes one last look at their faces before closing his eyes with a smile.

 

The next face he sees has bright blue eyes and a crooked mouth that says in a familiar, mildly frustrated tone, "Finally. What took you so long?"

 

2.

 

Sometimes John swears he can feel him, but he knows all he's feeling is the lingering ghost of what he's lost. After all, he'd watched Rodney die.

 

John carried out all the arrangements just as Rodney wanted. He made sure Carson performed a thorough autopsy of the body, and John read the report cover to cover before throwing up in the trashcan by his desk.

 

He spent twelve hours staring at a blank screen before spending another thirty-six writing and rewriting Rodney's eulogy, two laptops becoming casualties of his inability to capture Rodney's essence in stark black and white type. In the end, John balled up ten pages of carefully constructed words, shoving the fistful of papers at Zelenka before he stepped up to the podium. He got out several half-choked words and false starts, and by the time he was done he had no idea what he'd actually said, but Jeannie hugged him afterwards and kept whispering, "I know. I know," and only then did John realize he'd been crying.

 

Jeannie refused to go up in the jumper with John, and the understanding in her eyes was almost too much. John orbited the planet for hours, carefully staring down at the vast blue and white globe instead of at the small container in the copilot seat. When he couldn't stand it any longer, he carefully placed the box in the rear compartment, unnaturally angry that it took him three tries to release his grip. He slammed his fist down on the controls to seal and vent the rear compartment. He watched the cloud of dust spread, hazy grey over inky black, becoming so much space dust. When Rodney's ashes took up the entire area of sky encompassed by the jumper's windshield, John turned around and headed back to the city.

 

A week later, John snuck into the abandoned section of Atlantis and initiated the machine. He didn't even bother with meditation.

 

Elizabeth spread John's ashes into the same section of space as Rodney's.

 

3.

 

The first time John sees Rodney, he figures he must be hallucinating. While John has often pictured having Rodney appear naked in his quarters, something tells him this isn't one of his usual fantasies. His suspicions are confirmed when, instead of flinging himself at John as typically happens in this particular mental scenario, Rodney actually emits a surprised squeak and grabs frantically for something to cover himself. 'Something' turns out to be John's surfboard, and John quickly decides it's his new most prized possession.

 

Belatedly recovering from the shock, John raises one eyebrow at the vast expanse of pale naked torso and says, "Rodney? What—"

 

Before he can finish whatever the hell he was planning to say, Rodney holds out the hand not desperately clutching the surfboard and snaps impatiently. "Clothes now, questions later."

 

Which is actually a lie, because once John manages to get enough synapses firing to fish out a spare uniform – his t-shirt will never be the same after Rodney stretches it within an inch of its life – Rodney doesn't actually answer any of his questions. Instead, he insists on having John call everyone to the infirmary, where his grand entrance makes much the same impact on the rest of the staff as it did on John, thankfully this time without the added bonus of public nudity.

 

After a flurry of tearful grins and rather embarrassing bear hugs all around, Carson gives Rodney a thorough examination and Rodney makes vague noises about needles and Voodoo and forgetting how much pain was involved in being solid. Then they all adjourn to the conference room and Rodney tells them everywhere he went and everything he experience during his twelve weeks as an ascended being – "Well, what they let me remember, anyway." And there's no mistaking the snide whine of condescension in his tone, and John smiles. Rodney makes pointed and clumsily veiled reference to his dealings with both Chaya and Teer while glaring at John, but John is too busy being ecstatically happy to care. When Elizabeth is apparently satisfied, or at least succumbing to the post-homecoming fatigue that has gripped them all in the wake of their earlier adrenaline rush, she releases Rodney and tells him to get some rest. John immediately sidles up to walk him to his quarters, and by silent agreement everyone else disperses.

 

John knows that Rodney's quarters are exactly as he left them, minus the laptops that the science department has been pouring over for weeks. John likes to think that he always knew Rodney was coming back, but he doesn't think his shock at Rodney's appearance was entirely due to the nudity. As they stop outside Rodney's quarters, John asks the one question that's been in the back of his mind, the one that everyone else seems to have taken for granted. "So, Rodney…Why did you come back?"

 

Rodney looks at him strangely for a second, then says, "Seriously? Do you have any idea how boring that place was without—" Rodney stops, and before he can substitute "everyone" or "physics" for the "you" that John knows, _knows_ he was going to say, John pushes him through the doorway and kisses him. John is stripping Rodney's too-small jacket and horribly misshapen t-shirt before Rodney forces his way up for air and says, "Oh, of _course_. All I had to do to get your attention was _ascend_. You have a fetish, Colonel."

 

"It's John," he growls, capturing Rodney's mouth in another harsh, gleeful kiss. "And I prefer to think of it as a kink," he adds before pushing Rodney back onto the bed and making sure Rodney isn't capable of forming complete sentences for at least several hours.

 

4.

 

The first time John sees Rodney, he figures he must be hallucinating. He knows the leader of the Alsharians has been drugging him for the past week in her interrogations, but so far nothing she's given him has made him start seeing things. Apparently, she's decided to break out the good stuff.

 

John is all set to ignore the hallucination, until it speaks. "I swear, Colonel, if the Pegasus Galaxy ever falls, it'll be because you couldn't keep it in your pants."

 

"Hey!" he protests, on principle, because the village leader may be hot in that 'evil seductress' way, but his libido had absolutely nothing to do with him getting captured. And he sure as hell isn't going to take that kind of abuse from a hallucination, even if it does look like Rodney.

 

It becomes routine after a few days. Rodney appears in his cell after every interrogation session, and they trade barbs until John either passes out or falls asleep. Rodney keeps trying to explain something to him, something important, but apparently ascension hasn't helped with his interpersonal skills because they're both still shit at talking about feelings. Their conversations tend to degenerate into football and hockey metaphors interspersed with several awkward pauses. Oddly enough, it's this fact that convinces John that Rodney is, in fact, really here, because even John's own subconscious isn't that cruel. John suspects that about this same time their half-baked escape plan starts to take form.

 

John has to do all the hard work because, as Rodney frequently reminds him, he's incorporeal. John thinks that's just another word for lazy, but it goes well, Rodney calling out instructions on how to maneuver the facility and playing lookout for John. The trouble comes when John has to rewire the door. After two singed fingers he's about had it with Rodney's convoluted instructions and hisses, "You know, this would be a lot easier if you'd just get your ass down here and help me!" At Rodney's pained look, John gets a sick feeling in his stomach. He finds himself wanting to take it back, to take back the hope he lost at the expression on Rodney's face, but instead he focuses on getting the door open and getting back to Atlantis.

 

In the infirmary, after his visitors have bid him goodnight, John calls Rodney's name softly into the darkness. He appears instantly, looking exactly as he always had at John's bedside, worried and scared and glad he wasn't in John's place. "You're not coming back, are you?" John says without preamble.

 

Rodney does him the courtesy of not pretending to have no clue what John means. "No," he says at length. "I'm not." He swallows, then adds, "And you're never going to try to ascend."

 

John closes his eyes. "There's too much I have to do here." The room goes quiet, and when John opens his eyes he's surprised to find Rodney still here, and he's ridiculously happy. Suddenly, John sees his life spread out before him, endless stretches of grey between the visits from Rodney that make it all worthwhile, and that's no way to go through life, waiting for a ghost that he'll never be able to touch. He swallows thickly, then says, "Do me a favor, Rodney. Don't come see me again."

 

Rodney protests, wavering between anger and hurt, but John knows he'll give in when he adds, "Don't come back unless it's for good."

 

At that, Rodney sets his jaw, and he appears to consider it. John knows what his answer will be, knows that he pales in comparison to the knowledge of the universe, but he still feels that tiny spark of hope die when Rodney nods and says, "Goodbye, John."

 

He looks away before he can see Rodney vanish, unwilling to watch as Rodney disappears completely from his life.

 

5.

 

For John, ascension is a vast, quiet white, the edges soft and still. It reminds him of Antarctica, but without the cold. It's nice, but it doesn't feel complete. Something's missing.

 

He spends most of his time alone, waiting. At least, he thinks he's waiting. He remembers the feeling vaguely, from the time he'd spent with Teer, the time that had brought him to this place. It feels a little like that, so John figures he must be waiting, but he doesn't know what for or why. He's still getting used to knowing without actually _knowing_.

 

Then one day the whiteness expands. His space is invaded by angry reds and flashing gold and sharp, brittle blue, the colors swirling noisily, a blur of movement clamoring and buzzing around him. And John smiles, though he no longer has lips, and reaches out, though he no longer has hands, and touches the color and motion and sound. And John knows he's done waiting. Rodney's here.

 


End file.
